Abstract

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the rights holder of the Olympic Games. It is also arguably at the top of the international sport governance system. Just like Organizing Committees of Olympic Games (OCOGs) need multiple stakeholders to host a given edition of an Olympic Games, so too does the IOC interact with different stakeholders in its corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Here, stakeholders are those individuals, groups, and organizations that can impact, or be affected by the actions of, the focal organization, the IOC in this case (Freeman, 1984; Parent, 2008). What is unclear however, is how do Olympic stakeholders affect the IOC in its CSR activities and how are they impacted by the IOC’s activities at the Games and beyond? The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationships between the IOC, OCOGs, and other stakeholders in relation to the IOC’s CSR activities. We first provide an overview of the IOC and its stakeholders and propose a stakeholder map which reveals seven key stakeholders for Olympic CSR. We then discuss the IOC’s CSR activities, contrasting them with other sport organizations’ CSR initiatives. We end the chapter with concluding remarks and future directions.